A Nation-in-Exile in the Age of Non-Alignment

The arrival of Tibetan refugees along with the Dalai Lama in 1959 saw India reframe its understanding of the refugee away from that of the citizen figure of Partition to one more closely resembling the international, UN, one, even relabelling ‘returning’ diasporic Indians from Burma as repatriates where they had previously been called refugees. The Tibetans were granted partial rights by India, as part of that state’s sovereign right to grant asylum, effectively turning the decision into a matter of Indian sovereignty rather than trying to paint this as an international censure of China’s violation of human rights in the bipolar atmosphere of the Cold War. In keeping with a non-aligned stance, India’s leaders debated the place of human rights as self-determination for the Tibetan people, with a resulting impact on how humanitarian aid offered by the international community, for a group that met the UN definition even though India rejected such recognition, was handled. The relationship both with China and with Burma, in the handling of the ‘refugees’ and the ‘repatriates’ reflected the Cold War and regional tensions inherent in the Afro-Asian bloc as anti-colonial solidarities were transformed by postcolonial state-building.